Category: Ontario

Last week, Lindy and I took off to Toronto to attend this year’s Etsy Captain’s Summit. Every year, Etsy Canada gathers team captains from across the country to come participate in a special conference where we share ideas and celebrate all things handmade & vintage.

The first Summit was held in 2014 and originally centred around the Etsy: Made in Canada market. In order to attend, each team had to agree to put on the market in their own city, which was great for putting on a united front and making Made in Canada the big cross-country event it deserved to be, but it also meant some really great people doing really great things stayed home for 2014 & 2015. Continue reading Etsy Captains’ Summit 2016

On Sunday, I arrived in the snowy and cold city of Toronto – home to Etsy Canada’s headquarters. We’ve been having wonderfully warm weather in Calgary, so it was a bit of a shock to really be confronted with falling snow and chilly winds.

Weather aside though, I am incredibly happy to be here. I’m joined by co-organizers Lindy & Hilda to talk about the Made in Canada event for 2015, to share what we learned from organizing last year’s market and to hear about all the nifty things other cities and teams came up with for their own iterations of the market. Continue reading Etsy Captains’ Summit 2015

Earlier this year, I received an interesting invitation from Etsy, the online handmade and vintage marketplace. Etsy wanted to celebrate their Canadian vendors by organizing a multi-city pop-up marketplace in every major city across Canada. They needed help to do it, and as captain for the Calgary Artists team, I was invited to a special conference in Toronto.

Along with Hilda from Handmade Therapy, I spent three days in Toronto collaborating with fellow team captains and Etsy Canada’s staff to learn about their vision for what eventually became known as Made in Canada. There’s an interesting thing about being a vendor on Etsy – most of one’s sales come from buyers in the United States and overseas. Though there are thousands of talented Canadian Etsy sellers, Etsy remains a bit of a secret in Canada. I’ve seen this from my own shop, too. Of the sales I’ve had on Etsy, the majority have been shipped to US-based buyers. Continue reading Etsy: Made in Canada – Calgary Edition